With the onset of a new year, it’s useful to take stock of what is up next at the Museum. At the end of January, we will mark the second anniversary of DMA Friends, our much-heralded free membership program. With more information gleaned from our visitors than ever before, we are excited to share insights among four major art museums exploring the opportunities presented by this program, thanks to a six-figure grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and DMA are partnering in a roll-out of the museum Friends program, and will have much to learn in the months ahead.

The newly acquired Marcia H Travels (1970), the first work in the DMA’s collection by the Guyanese-born British painter Frank Bowling, will be displayed along with four other paintings by Bowling from private collections. Frank Bowling: Map Paintings, opening February 20, will mark the first time in nearly forty-five years that these “Map Paintings” will be brought together since their debut at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971.

Rounding out the spring, the US premiere of the internationally traveling exhibition, Michaël Borremans: As sweet as it gets, on the work of contemporary Belgian artist Michaël Borremans opens at the DMA in March 2015. Co-organized by the DMA and Center for Fine Arts, Brussels (BOZAR), this retrospective will draw our visitors into the fascinating realism of one of today’s most heralded painters.

A feast for the eye, all are made possible by the generous supporters of the DMA, to whom the Board and staff extend our sincere appreciation. I look forward to welcoming you to the Museum this winter and spring, and hope you will encourage others to join as DMA Partners to undergird free general admission—a year-round gift to our community.

Visitors to Bouquets: French Still-Life Painting from Chardin to Matisse have the opportunity to walk in the shoes of the exhibition’s artists. In the central gallery, they can draw their own still life from a real bouquet inspired by paintings in the exhibition and arranged by the DMA League’s Floral Committee. Check out some examples of these visitor-created masterpieces!

With the colder temps, and Thanksgiving right around the corner, we are starting to get into the holiday spirit with some fun holiday-themed programs and shopping to make your December merrier.

Every Thursday in December, enjoy a mix of seasonal and traditional jazz tunes at Jazz in the Atrium. The Thursday night concert series will feature some of the best musicians in town, led by Rob Holbert (December 4), Tom Braxton (December 11), and Freddie Jones (December 18).

Jazz in the Atrium at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Undermain Theatre continues its popular and free reading series at the DMA with an encore reading of Dylan Thomas’s classic poem A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Accompanied by traditional music and carols, A Child’s Christmas in Wales will be a charming afternoon of festive storytelling for the whole family on Saturday, December 13, at 2:00 p.m.

Undermain Reads A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

When you are at the DMA for Jazz in the Atrium and A Child’s Christmas in Wales, or at any other time, don’t forget to stop by the Museum Store and make it your one-stop shop for holiday gifts. One-of-a-kind items from around the world are available, from handmade felt animals to hand-painted, whimsical book ends, and products celebrating the DMA’s collection and the Bouquets exhibition. (I have already purchased the beautiful Bouquets 2015 calendar for a family member!)

And we’re not the only ones in the Dallas Arts District getting into the holiday spirit. On Saturday, December 6, experience Holidays in the District with a day of music, dancing, theater, art-making activities, photos with Santa, and more.

The DMA is positively blooming with floral still-life paintings this winter, thanks to the amazing works on view in Bouquets: French Still-Life Painting from Chardin to Matisse. Visitors can enjoy these paintings and even find a bit of creative inspiration in a sketching gallery, outfitted with a fresh floral arrangement, drawing supplies, and a place to display their drawings.

Inspired by the exhibition, DMA staff took a turn curating their own still-life creations. From traditional to offbeat, we hope you enjoy these interpretations of this classic genre that has inspired artists for centuries. If you’re feeling inspired, create your own still life and post it to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #BouquetsDMA—you may just see yourself retweeted!

In part, I am inspired by image-cropping choices made by a few artists in the Bouquets exhibition, such as Paul Cezanne, where the flower(s) doesn’t necessarily hold a central position. Gathering a small collection of objects with personal meaning and varied textures also influenced my composition.

– “End of Day Still Life” – Wednesdays are my busiest days. When I get home, I’m equally satisfied and exhausted. Nothing is going to get put away, everything goes on the table at the end of the day.

Anthea Halsey is the Senior Marketing & Social Media Manager at the DMA.

The Dallas Museum of Art is currently at T-minus 11 days until the opening of our new exhibition, Bouquets: French Still-Life Painting from Chardin to Matisse. Floral still-life paintings are arriving from across North America and Europe, and Bouquets will open to the public on Sunday, October 26, 2014 (DMA Partners will have a chance to see the exhibition a few days earlier during the DMA Partner Preview days on October 23-25).

As a curator of this exhibition, I’ve already had several people ask me how I became interested in this rather specialized subject. I will confess straightaway that it is not because I have any particular skill in growing flowers (sadly, the contrary), identifying flowers (I have a shockingly bad memory for names, of both plants and people), or arranging flowers (even the most elegant bouquet from the florist becomes an awkward muddle when I’m entrusted with the task of transferring it to a vase). So, I did not enter into this exhibition with the belief that I had any special insights into the world of flowers to share.

Rather, I was brought to the exhibition by the DMA’s art collection. In some cases, we decide to pursue an exhibition because it allows us as curators to share with our audiences art that is not represented in depth in our own collection. This was the case withJ.M.W. Turnerin 2008 or Chagall: Beyond Colorin 2013; however, there are also moments when we create exhibition projects as a way to showcase particular strengths of our collection and build a major research project around our own masterpieces. This was the case with Bouquets.

Several years ago, I was approached by my co-curator, Dr. Mitchell Merling of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, with an idea for an exhibition of French floral still-life painting. He wanted the exhibition to focus on the table-top still life and the bouquet, and was starting to build a list of possible works to include. Did the DMA have many paintings that fit that description, he asked? By the time I finished rounding up all the works that fit the bill, I went back to Mitchell and told him that I hoped to partner with him in curating the exhibition. Not only did the DMA have more than a dozen works of art that met the criteria, but quite a number of them were also masterpieces of our European art collections. These included important (and incredibly beautiful) paintings by Anne Vallayer-Coster, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Bonnard, and Henri Matisse. I knew that this exhibition would be an invaluable opportunity to give these paintings the kind of visual and scholarly context they so richly deserved. Luckily, Mitchell agreed with me, and we set to work on crafting the exhibition together.

Bouquets includes six important paintings from our collection, making the DMA the largest single lender to the exhibition. In addition to these works that will travel with the exhibition to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and the Denver Art Museum in 2015, we have also included two additional still lifes from our collection just for the show’s presentation in Dallas—the more the merrier! Although there wasn’t room to include all of our French floral still-life paintings in the exhibition, you can see several others elsewhere in the Museum.

For instance, in Mind’s Eye: Masterworks on Paper from David to Cézanne (on view until October 26, 2014, the same day that Bouquets opens), you can see a major pastel, Flowers in a Black Vase, by the inventive symbolist artist Odilon Redon. Redon is featured in Bouquets with three paintings, but because of the length of the exhibition tour we were not able to include any of his ethereal and fragile pastels. In Flowers in a Black Vase, Redon crafts one of his most sumptuous and darkly beautiful bouquets, a perfect floral tribute for the Halloween season:

When you visit our galleries of European art, you’ll see that in the place of Fantin-Latour’s Still Life with Vase of Hawthorne, Bowl of Cherries, Japanese Bowl, and Cup and Saucer, featured in Bouquets, we’ve brought out another painting, Flowers and Grapes, by the same artist. This meticulously composed autumn still life was one of the first paintings in the collection selected for treatment by Mark Leonard, the DMA’s new Chief Conservator, even before his Conservation Studio was opened last fall. The jewel-like tones of the chrysanthemums, zinnias, and grapes in the newly cleaned painting now positively glow on our gallery walls.

And, finally, in the Wendy and Emery Reves Galleries on Level 3, be sure not to miss a special display of one of our smallest and most unpretentious bouquets, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Bouquet of Violets in a Vase. Painted when the artist was just 18 years old, this still-life reveals the potent influence of Manet on the young artist, as well as Lautrec’s own precocious talent. This small panel painting, usually displayed in the Library Gallery of the Reves wing, where it is difficult for visitors to appreciate, is currently on view in an adjacent space where it can be enjoyed up-close, alongside another early painting by Lautrec.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Bouquet of Violets in a Vase, 1882, oil on panel, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection

Flowers are in bloom throughout the Museum this October, and there is no better time to fully appreciate the depth, importance, and sheer beauty of the DMA’s collection of European still-life painting.

Heather MacDonald is The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the DMA.

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